


Cold Winds Blow

by the_moonmoth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Harm to Animals, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would remember the look on her terrified face until the day he died, the way she had screamed for him as Spirit began to shy and lose his footing on the shifting ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Winds Blow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ownsariver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ownsariver/gifts).



> Hypothermia fic, because I do love a good cliché. Written for ownsariver, to help warm her up after spending her days outside in the -17 degrees “cold snap” currently freezing her country’s nipples off. My dear wildling, I don’t care what you say about woollen underwear and thermal suits, everyone in fandom knows the best way to get warm is to share body heat with someone unbearably sexy, with no clothes whatsoever...
> 
> Comments feed the author :)

_We were arguing,_ Sandor thought distantly as he unlaced Sansa’s bodice. _She thought she recognised this landscape. I told her it was impossible beneath ten feet of snow. I shouted at her._ Of all the times he had dreamed of stripping her bare, he had never imagined it like this. _I called her a stupid little bird._ Her white skin had taken on a bluish tinge, her sodden clothing clinging and difficult to remove.

“Sansa,” he rasped, over and over, slapping her gently on the face. To no avail: the lady of Winterfell remained resolutely unconscious.

She tried his temper so, the constant touching and soft smiles that he had no place for in the hardened husk of his being. The journey north had at times felt like barely more than one long argument, with his hand around his dick, bringing himself off while he thought vicious insults about Lady fucking Stark. She was so bloody confident they were in her lands, but how the fuck could she have known this set of ruins from any of the others they had passed, with the drifts piling up higher than their heads? He had wanted to wring her delicate little neck like a chicken, right up until the ice had started to crack with a resounding boom that unsettled the snow and shook the air.

He would remember the look on her terrified face until the day he died, the way she had screamed for him as Spirit began to shy and lose his footing on the shifting ice. Damn him, he should have realised the unnatural flatness of the snow in front of the ruin’s walls signified a moat, but with the snow coming ever heavier from a blank white sky he had thought only of finding shelter. And Sansa, who had told him just a moment before that she thought this place could be Winterfell, had fallen beneath the ice, her scream cut short by the sickening splash of freezing water.

 _I swore to protect her,_ he thought savagely as he moved the dead weight of her body about to divest her of her shift. _I should have ignored her games, as I did the rest of those bloody nobles in King’s Landing, and paid more fucking attention to our surroundings._ But Sansa Stark had always had a way of getting beneath his skin. He hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat when his hands came to the waist of her smallclothes, before he pulled them down her frozen legs and threw them in the pile with the rest of her garments, for they, too, were sopping wet and he cared less for her modesty than her survival. “Please,” he found himself whispering, “Sansa,” as if it were a prayer, though even the Elder Brother had not been able to convince him that the gods existed.

With no wood to be had, Sandor had built no fire, but this place, whatever it was, had no windows and just the one door, and the hot springs that had weakened the ice beneath Spirit’s hooves also served to heat the stone he laid Sansa down on now, wrapped in both of their bedding and his cloak. Sandor spared a brief thought for the two horses left outside, shoved hastily into a rickety old building that once might have been the stables, a flash of guilt for what may happen to Sansa’s mount, just as cold and wet as she had been. But it was fleeting, his fear for Sansa overwhelming every other concern, and he stripped himself as naked as she was before climbing under the furs with her.

Her skin was shockingly cold, so white it seemed near translucent. She had curled up instinctively into a tight little ball, hugging her knees to her chest, and he wrapped himself around her now, shivering and sick with worry that she was no longer shivering at all.

*

Sansa drifts in a world of dreams she is almost more comfortable in than the real one. She is Alayne again, smiling shyly at the new stable hand Randa had been singing the virtues of the day before. _He is so very tall and broad,_ she thinks, _just as Randa said,_ and though his hair is mousey brown, his eyes are a dark grey that makes her feel hot all over when he looks her way.

“M’lady,” he nods to her, smiling, and it isn’t a leering smile as Alayne has become used to, but a sweet smile that transforms his face and makes his rough features most attractive.

Alayne smiles back. “I am Alayne Stone,” she says, holding out her hand to him, “Lord Baelish’s daughter, but no lady.”

He looks at her confused for a moment, and Alayne wonders if perhaps gently born bastard girls do not usually offer their hands to the stable boys, but then he takes her hand in his – broad, strong hands rough with calluses – and bends to brush his lips across the back of her hand.

“Seth, m’lady,” he says, “Seth Stone.”

 _Stone? Then we have something in common already._ Alayne’s smile widens, giving rise to a strange fluttering in her stomach when it causes Seth Stone’s cheeks to colour.

She is sixteen years old, her nameday passing with the last turning of the moon. Her lord father is closing his net around Sansa Stark’s husband, and little Lord Arryn is beginning to ail badly – Alayne knows it will not be long before the negotiations for her marriage to Harry the Heir will be finalised. It is an excellent match for her, and Harry is handsome and courteous, but something in her balks at being yet another man’s prize, especially after she hears the news of the birth of his third bastard child. Especially when Harry’s claws come out and he demands that Alayne’s purity be ascertained before he will wed her, being a bastard and a very beautiful one at that.

Harry the Hypocrite, Randa calls him after that, but something else is occupying Alayne’s mind – an opportunity. The chance to act the way she desires to act, for perhaps the first time in her life, with the added incentive of releasing her from Harry’s attentions. Her father will not be happy – not in the slightest – but Sansa Stark used to be beaten by men in chainmail gloves, and Alayne Stone is braver than she ever was.

Seth Stone is warm and – shockingly, deliciously – naked when she climbs onto his straw pallet beside him in his small room up in the hayloft. He wakes to the feel of her kisses on his broad chest, her long hair tickling around his neck and down his shoulders.

“M’lady?” he murmurs in sleepy incredulity.

“Alayne,” she corrects him gently, smiling despite herself. When he pulls her up to kiss her there is a smile on his lips as well, and though he smells of hay and faintly of horse, and his hands are rough and callused and not fine and soft like a lord’s, Alayne thinks, _yes, this is much preferable to Harrold Hardyng._

She spends a blissful two months sneaking in and out of Seth’s bed every night, gigglingly begging Randa to get her moon tea from Maester Colemon so that he will not be able to betray her secret to Lord Baelish. They have little enough in common, Alayne and Seth – he cannot even read and only knows the coarser songs men sing when they are drunk or wish to be – but Alayne finds she does not need his conversation to find her pleasure in him. It isn’t what the stories tell of, but by the gods if they told of the sensations a woman could find in the strong arms of a man Alayne suspects there would be even more Stones and Snows and Rivers than exist already. And if she sometimes closes her eyes and imagines a different man above her, _within_ her, as she traces the strong muscles of Seth’s back and shoulders, then there is no need to share _that_ with either her lover (she flushes pleasantly every time she thinks the word) or Randa during their pillow talks.

*

It was impossible to judge the passage of time in their gloomy shelter, but the torch he had lit on the way in had long guttered out and Sandor now lay in darkness, one hand pressed snug against Sansa Stark’s teats to feel the shallow thud of her heartbeat against his fingers. It had been so slow, when he first climbed under the furs with her, that his stomach had seemed to lurch with every pause between beats, waiting on a knife’s edge for the next _thump-thump_. It felt as though hours had passed, but though her heart beat more strongly now, her skin was still so cold as to chill his own, and she talked – muttered words that made no sense, as though she was having fever dreams.

“Sandor,” she whispered, “ _Sandor,”_ and he could do nothing but rasp his reassurance against the shell of her ear, that he was there, that he would never leave her again, that he would give his life for hers if it meant her protection and safety. He did not think she could hear him, and when she cried out Littlefinger’s name, begging him incoherently to stop, Sandor could do nothing but hold her more tightly and promise himself that she would one day get her vengeance on that whoreson.

*

“Let me be sure I understand you, sweetling,” Petyr is saying, deceptively calm. “Not only have you soiled yourself with a base-born _servant_ , you have done so willingly, in the full knowledge that Harry would never have you so spoiled.”

“Yes, father,” Alayne says demurely. His calm is a veneer, but in that moment hers is real. She has tasted control, and it is sweet, and not even Petyr’s rage will make her regret it.

That is, of course, until he beats her bloody with his own hands, until she begs him to stop, until she cannot beg any more. She drifts for a while in her dream, the pain just a shallow memory, as ever pain is in dreams. When she comes back to her body she is lying in her featherbed, Randa’s sweet face and soft hands hovering over her.

“I have barred the door,” Randa says gently, her voice barely audible over the furious shouting and banging coming from the corridor beyond. “He cannot hurt you any more.”

“What have I done to deserve you?” Alayne asks, trying to smile through the swelling on her face, marvelling as tears form in Randa’s brown eyes and they clutch each other’s hands like lifelines. No one has cared for her safety at such cost to their own since... since... “He will make you pay for this,” she whispers in warning.

“Perhaps,” Randa allows, “but it will not be with his fists. Striking Nestor Royce’s daughter would be one step too far for the lords of the Vale. And perhaps,” she adds, eyes twinkling, “before too long, I might seek the protection of Lady Stark of Winterfell.”

 _Ah,_ Sansa Stark thinks, _so it is true, there are no true knights – all the bravery has been bestowed on women._

It is two days before she can walk, and another day before Randa deems her fit to sit a horse, and then, despite the fact that Petyr has laid his eyes and ears in wait for such a move, Randa takes her in the dead of night and they ride for Runestone and Bronze Yohn Royce.

The old knight is not pleased to see them. He has little and less love for Lord Baelish, but he knighted Harrold Hardyng himself and Sansa has played them all for fools. Still, Randa has judged it right that he would sooner be rid of her than hand her back to Petyr, and so it is that he sets them on a boat to the Bay of Crabs and an island little known to many, where a sept is maintained by a group of godsworn brothers.

 _Sandor,_ Sansa thinks. _This is where I found you. You were not pleased to see me, but you left the island readily enough, and pledged your sword to me._

“I thought you were dead,” she says when first she sees him, taken by surprise at the force of her emotion as instinct drives her forwards and into his arms. At first she thinks him struck dumb – only discovers afterwards that he is sworn to silence.

“Didn’t swear to it,” he corrects her later. “Just went along with it, as I always have.”

“Have you _never_ sworn an oath?” she asks him then, half in pity, half in disbelief. That is when he swears his sword to her. The way he looks on one knee, naked steel in his hands offered up to her, grey eyes so intense it feels as though he is burning a hole right through to her soul, shakes her down to her bones. She knows then that she loves him. Loves him powerfully. It fills her with a lightness, a fierce joy in his company. It fills _him_ with irritation, but even that amuses her, for she knows its source. He will be hers, he just doesn’t realise it yet.

And then the ice begins to crack, and Sansa realises that she will die without ever having known if he really would have taken her heart, and that fills her with such sadness that she weeps – in her dream, and in the waking world too – and she wakes, finally, finally, blissfully warm, with a man’s callused thumb wiping the tears gently from her face and breath, warm and steady, stirring the hair at the back of her neck.

*

She was groggy when she first came around, and so Sandor tucked her in tightly before leaving to retrieve their supplies. It was still snowing outside, and bitterly cold without his cloak, but once he had retraced his steps to the stables he found the horses huddled together at the far end, away from the pile of snow that had fallen in when the roof collapsed. Their bodies were steaming, Spirit looking little the worse for wear after his own plunge into the icy moat, warmed by Stranger’s body.

“Good boy,” he said, slapping Stranger’s flank as he removed the saddle and bridle and found some handfuls of hay left in storage. Doing the same for Spirit, he took the saddlebags and returned to Sansa.

She was shivering when he made his way back down, a fresh torch in hand, and so he slid the torch into a wall sconce, placed the saddlebags within arm’s reach, and stripped off once more to join her beneath the furs.

She relaxed against him almost as soon as he lay beside her, turning over to bury her face against his chest, her knees still hugged tight to her body and pressing now against his belly, her cold feet on his thighs.

“Water,” she croaked, and he reached for a skin, hoping it hadn’t frozen.

She slept again, and he felt himself sliding in and out of wakefulness, the weight of his relief and a strange contentment pressing down on him like a heavy cloak. He dreamed of her, which was nothing unusual in itself, but when he awoke once more it was because she had unwound her limbs from the tight ball she had tucked herself into before, and was now pressed all along the length of him, making small noises in the back of her throat as she shifted restlessly.

His arms tightened around her back instinctively, pressing his erection hard against her belly, before he realised what he was doing and released her.

“Mmm, don’t go,” a drowsy voice murmured when he tried to roll away, one slim arm snaking around his back to hold him in pace. “You’re so warm.”

“Sansa,” he said, knowing the sound of his voice would remind her who she was with, hoping it would pull her out of whatever pleasant fantasy she had been dreaming. She stopped rubbing herself against him, but she did not move away, holding him close, her breath stirring the hair on his chest. “What do you remember?” he added, trying to take his mind away from the almost painful arousal she was creating in him.

“I fell in the moat,” she said. He could see her blinking heavy eyelids, trying to force a sluggish mind back into action. “And you...” she began, raising her head to look at him. Sandor braced himself for her to move away, but instead she merely pulled herself up his body until they were face to face, the delicious friction of her bare teats on his chest and her maiden’s hair on his cock almost too much to keep silent on. _There is no way she cannot feel how much I desire her. What is she playing at?_ “You promised me you would never leave me,” she continued. “You said you would die for me.”

“You were dreaming, little bird,” he replied through gritted teeth.

Sansa smiled wryly at him, fingertips tracing an infuriating line down the centre of his chest. “You only ever call me _little bird_ when you’re trying to think of me as a frightened girl.” And then she pushed her thigh between his, taking him so utterly by surprise that he let her, unable to hold back his groan of pleasure and torment this time as she rubbed his achingly hard cock against her.

“What are you doing, _Sansa?_ ” he growled, pushing her onto her back, unable to resist thrusting against her once, twice, before pulling his body away from hers, holding her at arm’s length.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she retorted laughingly. Then, when he continued to glower, her expression softened, and she reached up to cover one of his hands with her smaller hand. “May I?” she asked, pinning him with those guileless blue eyes so that he did not realise where she was guiding his hand until it was too late.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he groaned, as she pressed his hand between her legs.

“Feel how wet I am?” she murmured. “I was dreaming of you, dreaming we were lying together as man and wife, and then I awoke, naked in your arms, to find the dream was almost real. Gods, I want you, Sandor. I _ache_ for you. I’m no maid for you to spoil– _yes_.”

She near sobbed the last word as he pushed a finger into her wet warmth, rubbing his thumb over the sensitive knot of flesh above her vulva, make her arch her back, her cunt contracting around him.

“Fuck,” he said again, cock throbbing in need of her, “ _Sansa._ ”

She reached for him, wrapping her hand around his cock and stroking him slowly with a practised ease that surprised him. _She’s no maid, she said._

“Who was it?” he gasped, feeling his blood rise at the thought that it might have been Littlefinger.

“A boy,” Sansa said around a moan as he pushed a second finger into her. “A stable boy. I thought he reminded me of you, but – _oh_.”

She hooked a leg over his hip, guiding his cock down to her entrance, so fucking eager. “After this, you’re mine,” he warned her, rubbing the head of his cock against her wetness, revelling in her almost animal cries, the scratch marks she was leaving on his shoulders.

“Yes,” she said, as he pushed into her. “I love you.”

Sandor felt a sudden sharp swelling of sensation in his chest as he buried his face in her hair and fucked into her cunt, Sansa arching up to meet his thrusts. He had never once said those words that tumbled so easily from her lips – had never wanted to, until now. They stuck in his throat like an arrow in a rib, too raw, too new to be exposed to her scrutiny just yet. And so he kissed her, and tried to speak to her in that way, expressing himself through his actions as had always come most naturally to him.

She came with his name on her lips, shuddering her release, bringing him to his own with the very sight of her, beautiful and naked and near screaming with the pleasure he had given her.

“You’re mine,” he said again afterwards, still shivering with pleasure, his cock softening within her as he pressed kisses to her temple, down her cheek, along her jawline.

“Yes,” she repeated, with all the solemnity of a vow. "And you're mine."

They lay like that for a little while, tangled up in each other as their sweat cooled. Sansa kissed him and stroked his back and Sandor tried to get over the fact that it had really happened, that she not only wanted him, but needed him too.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“For what, little bird?”

She smiled so sweetly that he felt his heart clench. “I like it much better when you say it like that,” she said, stroking his face. “Thank you for saving my life again. Thank you for finally giving in to me. Thank you for bringing me home.”

Sandor smiled into her skin despite himself. “You really think this is Winterfell?”

“Look,” Sansa said in reply. Following her gaze, Sandor looked over at the effigy that stood in the alcove next to the sconce where he had secured his torch earlier. It was a statue of a stern-faced man sitting on a stone seat, a rusty old iron sword crumbling across his knees and a wolf sitting alert at his heels. In the alcove next to it, a similar effigy was just on the edge of sight, and though after that the hall descended into darkness, Sandor could easily believe that the alcoves and the statues continued on to infinity. “These are the old Kings of Winter. My ancestors. This is the crypt beneath Winterfell, it must be,” she said. “Sandor, we’re home.”

Sandor reflected that he had found his home long before now, though it had taken the whole journey here to realise it. “Aye, little bird,” he agreed, and kissed her once again.

 


End file.
